Forget sequester. What about $1T in annual cuts?

• Obama's compromise Sequestration = $85 billion for the rest of the 2013 fiscal year (ends September 30th).
• Republicans' House-approved Cut Cap and Balance Act = $1 trillion a year, give or take a few billion.
• Republicans' hostage taking of the debt ceiling = $1 trillion a year, give or take a few billion.

$2 trillion dollars later in federal spending, would you say that inflation has exploded and that we're in a Greek fiscal problem with scary, high borrowing costs?  Or would you say that the economy has steadily improved?

Okay, now let's assume that Republicans had their way, and Cut Cap and Balanced was signed into law, resulting in $1 trillion (at least) in cuts, each year.

Given that the CBO recently projected 750K fewer jobs created for the rest of 2013, resulting from $85B in spending cuts, do you think that our economy would have steadily improved, or fallen into the worst Depression, ever, from $1 trillion in annual cuts?

I vote for growth and Keynesian economics, not for a government that adds onto the economic woes in both directions (crowds out spending when the economy is hot, and expands unemployment when the economy is slow).

Welcome / приветствие / Begrüßung

The thing about the world wide web is that it is...world wide.  Contrary to a fear of being overdue for a global war, the internet brings us closer together, allowing us to see how others around the world think.  Words, not weapons.

I bring this up, because upon looking at my meager blog's traffic from this past month, apparently many of you who casually read it, come from Russia, Germany and the UK.  (Wait, was that the medal count at the Summer Olympics? -- heh!)

Also, I noticed that a number of you use Linux.  I say kudos to you folks, the ever-growing number of people who use Linux; I hope to join your ranks later this year or so, if I ever get around to building a computer using the case of an old Dell Inspiron.

I don't know why you'd be interested in my blog, and frankly, I thought I'd use this blog to flesh out my ideas about things that interest me, and to eventually put them in a book about my thoughts (thanks, Amazon, for a self-publishing platform!).

Thanks for reading; I hope it was useful in some small way.

House Republican intransigence.

Today, the House passed the Senate's version of the Violence Against Women Act.  In the details of the history of House Republican actions on the renewal of this popular bill, comes this nugget from CSM:

"In 2012, a similar bill passed the House 222 to 205 with 23 Republicans in opposition and six Democrats in favor and with similarly broad bipartisan appeal in the Senate. 

However, that bill foundered when Republicans insisted that a procedural point made the Senate bill invalid. (Senate Democrats included a fee in their bill to pay for more visas for abused undocumented immigrants, violating the constitutional rule that all revenue measures have to originate in the House.)"

Now, of course we know that, as stated in the US Constitution's Article 1, Section 7:

"All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."

Kicking and screaming, House Republicans did everything they could to block the renewal of the Violence against Women Act, up until it became politically untenable to remain on the sidelines.

We saw this with the fiscal cliff -- we went over the cliff, after all.

We saw this with the Hurricane Sandy relief aid bill -- House Republicans allowed the previous session's bill to expire at the end of the term, rather than act on it.

Now we have the see-castration.

When you hear Republicans complain about a lack of leadership, the truth is, House Republicans do not want to be led anywhere, rather, they need to be pushed kicking and screaming.

Q4-2012 US GDP revised to a net positive.

Last month, I wrote in a blog entry (over Marco Rubio's response to the SOTU address):

"He [Rubio] said that GDP shrank the last 3 months; not true at all.  As the BEA report showed, in the last quarter GDP grew, just not as fast as inflation.  And other economic indicators point to an upward adjustment to a positive GDP number."

Well, we got that upward adjustment, just as I thought we would.

In its revised estimate, the BEA pushed the initial -0.1%, GDP adjusted for inflation, up to +0.1%, but critically, the nominal GDP number increased from +0.5% to +1.0%.   I think it will go higher.  Q3-2012 GDP was revised upward in each of two estimates following the headline report, and, while I didn't report on this at the time, Macroeconomic Advisers' report on December GDP implied much stronger growth than the +0.1% reflects.

And to reiterate the point about GDP and the Republican quest to cut federal spending: the largest driver of a low GDP in the fourth quarter, was reduced government spending.

To reiterate: You cannot trust Bob Woodward.

Bob Woodward was exasperated yesterday, saying that he was threatened by the White House for stating his opinion that they had moved goal posts in the sequestration debate.

But as I said previously, you cannot trust Bob Woodward.  For whatever reason, he cannot think straight at this moment, on this subject.

Via Politico, what really happened, is that an official in the White House -- Gene Sperling -- apologized in an email to Woodward following a one-on-one shouting match:

I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall — but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here. 

But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain [sic] with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.) 

I agree there are more than one side to our first disagreement, but again think this latter issue is diffferent. Not out to argue and argue on this latter point. Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously. 

My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.

In response, Woodward wrote back:

"You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of a serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening. I know you lived all this. My partial advantage is that I talked extensively with all involved. I am traveling and will try to reach you after 3 pm today."

So you see, Woodward contorted the email into a veiled threat, for some self-serving reason.

You cannot trust Bob Woodward, not on this subject at this time, at least.

Nothing makes me laugh like Republicans.

This from Politico:

"Republicans are fretting that the $85 billion in cuts will transfer big power to the administration. Lawmakers say President Barack Obama’s administration will have unilateral leeway to shutter federal programs and spend the government’s money without any input from them."

But remember, House Republicans voted last year to avoid sequestration and to avoid blame for any cuts, by forcing President Obama to name the cuts that he'd replace them with:

"The House approved a new version of a sequester replacement bill on Thursday that would require the Obama administration to propose an alternative to the $55 billion in defense cuts scheduled to take effect in January."

And the most recent GOP proposal, was to force President Obama to prioritize the sequestration cuts.

Every step of the way, congressional Republicans have voted consistently to cut spending, then try to pin the blame on President Obama and Democrats, but in doing so, cede congressional powers to the White House.

So who's to blame, if as they feared, President Obama unilaterally aligns cuts to his prerogative?

Republicans, of course!  See-castration.

You're laughing too, I sense.

Fly to Mars and back...or die trying.

Billionaire dude just announced a plan to send an older married couple to Mars and back, in 2018, in about 500 days, in a craft with an interior footprint of about 12 feet by 14 feet.

I appreciate what he's trying to accomplish and love the idea of going on a long voyage with someone I love, am friends with, and enjoy being around.  But 500 days with that person, in a space craft whose size amounts to a master bedroom, is really pushing the limits of sanity.  The purpose of using an older, married couple is meant to limit the risk of two occupants going crazy.

I'd probably survive better if I went alone, with my dog.  And 1,000 hours of ripped music and movies.  And my Nexus 7 of course, to play video games.

Can you imagine a dog walking on the surface of Mars?  He'd probably want to pee on one of the rovers...but of course instead, end up peeing inside his suit.

---

An update: Apparently they won't be landing on Mars.  70 million miles (back and forth, combined) and all I got was some photos while orbiting Mars, and the damned camera had some lint in it.  It's bad enough driving to the coast and back in the day -- hey at least I got to walk on the beach -- but to go all the way to Mars and not even step on Martian soil?  Why?

See-castration.

See-castration
-ed, -ing
verb: To stand by as you watch your own balls get cut off.

Ex 1: Republicans see-castrated themselves this month as automatic spending cuts proved successful in destroying the GOP.

Ex 2: Like a deer staring at headlights, he was see-castrating on stage, in front of a thousand people.

Bah-Gah-Wah!

Bah-Gah-Wah
slang: Concatenated expression of, "Bah humbug, I don't care; Gah, I can't believe I didn't care; Wah, I regret not caring earlier!"

Ex 1: Do your due diligence or else you'll be all Bah-Gah-Wah!
Ex 2: Bah-Gah-Wah, zombies everywhere!  I wish I didn't leave my axe at home!

MoFoDoh.

MoFoDoh
slang (as noun, adj., or verb): When you're forced to issue a correction on a correction, or multiple fixes in a row.

Ex 1: Adobe's a MoFoDoh; they issues a fix a few days ago, then issued another one yesterday for multiple Zero-Day flaws.
Ex 2: I did a MoFoDoh today, when I sent out a set of drawings with the wrong title, then I had to reissue them again because I forgot to change the date.
Ex 3: Don't MoFoDoh; always measure twice.

@?!%#&!@ Windows!

I lost a half hour of work -- in between saves -- because of the fucking automatic reboot from critical Windoze updates.

@?!%#&!@ you 100,000,000 over.  Next machine will be Linux.

Chris Christie, hated by the Right?

No kidding, the Right seems to despise Chris Christie, so much so that the Conservative Political Action Conference did not invite him to speak at this year's meeting.

And what surely rubbed the Right the wrong way, today he announced that New Jersey would join the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid to help lower and middle income families afford health care coverage.

It must be that huge bipartisan support (74% approval rating) that he enjoys as governor, that ultimately doomed his cred as a lovable, desired conservative, though.

Anyone else obsessed with Portlandia's theme song?

Every time I hear Washed Out / Ernest Greene's Feel it All Around, I feel as though it's Summer in Portland. It's totally a Summer chill out song, don't you think?  Just put this song on, if you're enduring snow right now, and think about Summer for a while.

The big lie: Republican governors edition.

Per Politico: "Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said it’s Obama’s responsibility to come up with alternative options for government cuts."

Not true at all:

• Media Matters informs us that Obama has, indeed, a plan.
• And if you wanted to, you can take the time to read the White House plan from September 2011, to avoid sequestration cuts.
• We've known the basic outline for years, that he'd like equal tax increases combined with spending cuts.  We know this, because this was the same theme used to deal with the fiscal cliff, which was the same theme he used during the campaign season, and was the same theme that he first tried to use in the original debt ceiling talks during the Summer of 2011.

(An aside: The option that the Republican House came back with last Spring (2012), was to force Obama to come up with his own cuts that would total the $1.2T (over a decade) in cuts, or otherwise face the prospect of the elimination of cuts to defense and an immediate cut of $19.1B (1.8%) to discretionary spending.  Well, that died quickly with Senate Democrats identifying the trap that Republicans were trying to set.

Republicans thought they'd win majorities in the House, Senate and take back the White House, so they didn't bother to compromise on anything.  Well, they lost.  Now they're back to trying to pin the tail on the donkey.)

In that same Politico piece, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said that Republicans are "for growing the American economy".  If that's true, then why did they support Cut, Cap and Balance, which, in the words of John Boehner, "makes spending cuts that exceed the debt increase"?  Or are deeper, faster cuts supposed to help the economy grow?

We're being given a series of rhetorical lies.

They (Republicans) don't want less and slower cuts; they want faster, bigger cuts, and they are trying to repackage that as drivers of growth.

Not since George Orwell's 1984, have I read this much double-speak.

Nom, nom, love me some Ikea meatballs!

I make fun of the spreading horse meat scandal in the EU, of course.  But in all seriousness, I still love Ikea meatballs, here in the US. Of course here in the US, we have the USDA and Ikea's meatballs here come from the US, not from the EU.

Although I think we should recall that Republicans seeking to restore defense sequester cuts, wanted to double the discretionary spending cuts.  And of course, you know what that means: slashed USDA funding.

One might even conclude that Republicans care more about killing people under the guise of defense, than whether or not horse meat gets into our beef supply. Or to be concise, Republicans do care about whether there is horse meat in the US food supply chain, but they don't want to pay for regulations and inspections that would prevent horse meat from getting into the US food supply chain.

Or cat meat.

Or dog meat.

Or road kill.

Why you shouldn't trust Bob Woodward or John Boehner.

You will keep hearing about how President Obama is to blame for the sequester cuts and that it was his idea, not Speaker Boehner or any Republicans'.  It is complete bullshit, and here's why.

Boehner wanted deeper cuts sooner
John Boehner owns the Balanced Budget Amendment.  In his own video, he boasts having previously voted for the BBA and his continued support for a BBA in 2011.  He supported immediate cuts in spending with restrictions on tax increases -- he says so, word for word, in his video.



This video was posted July 11, 2011.  On July 19th, he offered his Cut, Cap and Balance plan:

"The “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan meets the criteria Speaker Boehner and Republicans laid out months ago for a debt limit proposal: it makes spending cuts that exceed the debt increase, requires reforms that restrain future spending, and prevents job-crushing tax hikes on families and job creators."

That plainly states that Boehner supported big cuts now, not small ones or ones that took a decade or longer to achieve, like the sequester.

Obama wanted less cuts and later
Bob Woodward doesn't seem to get the logic, here.  He says that Obama owns the sequester cuts, that it was Jack Lew's idea.  What Woodward doesn't explain, is that Obama tried to lessen the cuts that would have resulted from not increasing the debt ceiling, while Boehner lobbied for bigger cuts that would occur immediately.  During both the debt ceiling and the fiscal cliff discussions, Obama was trying to seek partial offsets for lesser cuts, by expanding taxes, particularly for those who are well off.

If the debt ceiling stayed in place, would Woodward have said that Boehner owned those cuts?  I think the distinction should be made, because Obama didn't want any of these cuts to begin with; again, remember that Boehner said that he got 98% of what he wanted in the Budget Control Act that gave us sequestration.

Bottom line
Republicans: Curiously and concurrently, they believe that deep cuts will help growth, but that the sequester cuts in defense will hurt jobs and make us less safe.

Boehner: Demonstrated a desire to shrink government many times, but he has never shown any backbone in taking responsibility for those cuts.

Woodward: Thinks Obama owns the sequestration, as if avoiding the debt ceiling cuts wasn't of huge importance to the economy.  Some would call that a white lie; I call it complete bullshit.

Obama: Didn't want the sequestration cuts, but caved in, because the only thing worse than sequestration cuts, were cuts required by the debt ceiling remaining in place.

Who lied to you?

David Brooks reiterates multiple entitlement fallacies. No one cares.

I've covered this many times.  Once again, on PBS' News Hour David Brooks has repeated the fallacy of commingling Social Security and Medicare as contributing to the US debt.  There are certainly parts of Medicare that contribute to the federal debt -- most notably the Medicare Drug benefit expansion by Republicans -- but Social Security does not contribute a single cent towards the federal debt.

It is asinine for the media to continue to allow this fallacy to fester.  Stop it, already.

The second fallacy?  That medical costs are out of control.  In part because of the 2009 ACA (Obamacare) passage, Medicare costs are slowing down, such that the CBO has revised its baseline downward.  But wait, President Obama's former OMB Director, Peter Orzag, told us so in 2011.  And he told us again, at the end of last year.

Why won't anyone excoriate him and his ilk for repeating these fallacies ad nauseum?

On the eve of the eve before the Oscars.

Ten (barely connected) thoughts.  Try to keep up.

1. Argo will win Best Picture, because everyone knows some somebody got snubbed for Best Director, and so far all of the other awards committees have given that some somebody the Best Director nod.
2. When I was going to USC, the Oscars were held at the Shrine next to USC and traffic was horrible, but living next to USC meant not having to drive to school, so it was all good.  Living in Los Angeles was the first time I ever had the pleasure in my life of being acquainted with the nightly sounds of helicopters and gun fire.
3. I lived and stayed through the LA Riots, when most of USC students left early, skipping out on exams.  I have previously posted some of the pictures I took.
4. When I moved to Hollywood, I (we) lived just five blocks from the Mann Chinese, but I never went.
5. The Kodak Theatre (now the Dolby Theatre) was built adjacent to the Mann Chinese; I've visited since moving away, but I've never gone to the Mann nor the Kodak Theatre.
6. The neighborhood was not so nice when I lived there.  Young kids and young adults would deal drugs on the street below, and there were frequent stake outs and busts by the LAPD.  Gentrification is probably a good thing, as the neighborhood looks a lot better now.
7. When I (we) moved to Silver Lake, it was more of a secret neighborhood and about 75% gay -- something I (we) didn't realize until after I (we) had moved in.  I (we) had a good laugh about that.  It was West Hollywood, but much closer to downtown.  It was also at the height of the HIV scare, and some of my neighbors had HIV (and died later after I had moved up to Portland).  Now it's a really hip place to live...Hollywood types, too.
8. I do not miss Hollywood, Silver Lake, or Los Angeles in general, even though it has become quite the spectacular place to live in.  It's really easy to get lost in anonymity, or just to get lost; it's also still hard to walk around Los Angeles.
9. But I dearly miss the dorayaki at the Mitsuru Cafe in Little Tokyo.  And the mochi from Fugetsu-Do, too.
10. I used to work at a mochi shop, where we made mochi, manju and shoyu peanuts.

Anyway, my bet is on Argo for Best Picture...although frankly, I would always want to give Best Picture to any film by Quentin Tarantino.

Google Maps actually has this aerial from a previous Oscar Awards.

More thoughts on the sequester cuts.

Okay, so I've actually spent time contemplating the different messages coming out of the Republican Party, and I think I can see the political calculus.

They want the cuts
Republicans really want cuts, and more than that they want big cuts.  They've voted many times to keep the debt ceiling in place, and the repeatedly offer the Balanced Budget Amendment at the start of each session of Congress.  If the US Senate doesn't do exactly what the House Republicans want, they will allow the debt ceiling to revert back to the cap from earlier this year.

As a matter of fact, they were reluctant in the first place to raise it in 2011, which is why they agreed to the debt ceiling deal -- they would get their cuts either way.  Or as John Boehner said in 2011, "When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the white House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy."  And if you don't believe the word out of the horse's mouth, then what about his powerpoint presentation to his own group?  He clearly touts the fact that, either way, Republicans will get their spending cuts!

Read Dave Weigel's timeline of what happened, and it should be very obvious: Republicans -- outside of a group of pure defense hawks (who are establishment Republicans) -- really don't want to block the sequester cuts.

But they're blaming others
As you've noticed lately, Boehner and other Republicans have been trying to pin the sequester cuts on Obama.  Even Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader has gotten into the act, saying that they are not to blame for the cuts.

Boehner says that, "There is nothing wrong with cutting spending that much -- we should be cutting even more -- but the sequester is an ugly and dangerous way to do it."

That's kind of irrational don't you think?  Remember again that they -- Republicans -- have insisted on keeping the debt ceiling in place or having a Balanced Budget Amendment passed.  Both would result if FAR HIGHER REDUCTIONS than the sequester cuts.  If he didn't want the sequester cuts, then how in the world could he want a BBA or to keep the debt ceiling in place?

If you read enough Tea Party / Libertarian opinion pieces, they all conclude that deep cuts will improve the economy, no kidding.

Because they're chickens.
They don't want the blame if things go really bad this year (and next year, etc).  Either they believe that in the long run (at the expense of the short-term) big cuts will save America (thus blame Democrats for the short-term pain and reap the benefits of long-term gains), or they're hedging their bets.  There is a very small group of establishment defense hawks who are upset, but they are a very small group.

Either way, they're a bunch of chickens (except the defense hawks), and personally, I don't think they're very bright (including the defense hawks).  The defense hawks are actually quite the hypocrites.  On the one hand they warn of the nation's preparedness in the wake of defense cuts, but on the other hand the automatic cuts in entitlements means...good?

You know, if they really cared about economics they would have taken notice over the recent capitulation by the IMF on fiscal multipliers.  If they did, they would have noticed that a Fed hawk turned into a dove last year.  If they did, they would have noticed that, England, despite having its own currency, pursued austerity and thus we are about to see the UK plunge into an unprecedented triple-dip recession.

You know, we've seen this sort of chickening-out finger-pointing by Republicans before.  The 2009 ACA (Obamacare) reduced Medicare doctor reimbursement rates, which Republicans then used as political fire against Democrats, saying that Republicans wouldn't cut mom's Medicare.  This was after House Republicans overwhelmingly supported larger cuts in Medicare under both of Paul Ryan's budgets, and the continued rhetorical push by John Boehner and other Republicans arguing for deep cuts to Medicare by capping federal contributions.  They want the cuts, they just don't want to be blamed for the cuts.

When Republicans insist that Obama lead, they're saying that they don't have the balls to lead; when Republicans insist that Obama stay out, they're saying that they they think they know what they're doing, and want to get full credit for it.

In the end.
They're still stuck on Benghazi. Unless the political pressure is turned up, there probably isn't much to do but wait for Republicans to see firsthand what the cuts do to the economy.

Ick: Hotel water contaminated with dead body.

Oh the horror.  Hotel Cecil in downtown Los Angeles received complaints about the water's pressure being too low -- that aside from the complaints of bad tasting water, apparently.  A maintenance person checked the water tanks on the roof, and in one of them was the rotting corpse of a woman.

For nearly three weeks, guests were bathing and drinking the water contaminated by a dead woman's body.

"When you turned the tap on, the water was coming black first for two seconds and then it was going back to normal."

Well, that's probably not the reason that the water was black; that's typically because of rust in the pipes.  The taste was more likely from the rust in the pipes, as well.  Most everyone who has visited Los Angeles, knows that the water already tastes pretty bad, which is why most everyone who lives in LA and the region, use bottled water to drink from.  I digress.

It turns out that this woman was Elisa Lam, who had been staying at the Hotel Cecil, of course until she went missing, that is.  She checked in, but never checked out.

In the video below, she appeared to have a psychotic breakdown of some sort (looks like a drug-induced hallucination, no?) as she gets into the elevator.  You're probably wondering like I am, why don't the doors ever close, when she's obviously pushed a bunch of buttons, and she stands outside, away from the door.  At the end of the video, you can clearly see the door close and open, as it moves from one floor to the next.



Her arms loosely swing about after first getting into the elevator, implying that she's extremely high.  Later, when her hands start moving around in the air, there's a short glimpse of her face, and you can see that she is smiling (at 1:59).  She's not tense at all, as she's constantly bending her knees as she moves her hands around.

Weird, right?  Adding to the mystery, according to the LA Times:

"A locked door that only employees have access to and a fire escape are the only ways to get to the roof. The door is equipped with an alarm system that notifies hotel personnel if someone is up there, Lopez said."

In a separate story from the LA Times, one resident said that there was a "tremendous" noise the night before this woman had disappeared, and that the day after she disappeared there was some obstruction between the 3rd and 4th floor drains that caused flooding on the fourth.

Wow.  Freaky and icky.

Google Glass: Top 10 verbal commands I'd like to have.

(In no particular order) O.K. Google...

1. How many degrees of Kevin Bacon is that woman on the bench?
2. Where did I put my keys?
3. Whee did I put my phone?
4. Where did I put my wallet?
5. Is it time to eat yet?
6. Are we there, yet?
7. What's my compatibility rating with that woman over there?
8. Does she have children?
9. Locate open parking stall.
10. Is that thing poisonous?

Thoughts on the sequester cuts.

The sequester cuts would offer a preview of even deeper cuts that would result from a fixed debt ceiling or a Balanced Budget Amendment, both of which are ideas manufactured by conservatives.

If you think families tied to the military factories are about to face some pain now, wait until that debt ceiling issue comes up again in late Spring of this year.  See Macroeconomic Advisers blog on their forecast on the sequestration cuts:

• "The sequestration would reduce our forecast of growth during 2013 by 0.6 percentage point (to 2.0%) but then, assuming investors expect the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to delay raising the federal funds rate, boost growth by 0.1 percentage point (to 3.4%) in 2014. 

• By the end of 2014, the sequestration would cost roughly 700,000 jobs (including reductions in armed forces), pushing the civilian unemployment rate up ¼ percentage point, to 7.4%.  The higher unemployment would linger for several years."

Personally, I think they're underestimating the impact, because these are annual cuts for the entire decade.  But for argument's sake, if $1.2T in cuts over the next decade is bad, then $1T a year in cuts (projected shortfall for 2013) is A LOT MORE BAD (excuse the terrible English).

So uhm, I think we're actually witnessing the destruction of the Republican Party (and the eventual rebirth of a pre-Reagan moderate group) actually.

Grande Mal: Francois Hollande

And by Grand Mal, I mean, big disease, of course. [explanation added, in case people got the wrong idea]

Well, I have to say that after last year's win by Francois Hollande who, during his campaign said that austerity was bad, decided to embrace austerity full on. And now look where it's gotten him and France.

This, mind you, despite the IMF doing a complete about-face, now saying that fiscal multipliers are indeed large, and therefore austerity actually damages an economy.

If you are French, of course you're disappointed.

If you are conservative, of course you're looking for excuses, because, well, if fiscal multipliers are large, then Keynes was right all along and austerity has SLOWED economic recovery, not helped it.

[added] Speaking of fiscal multipliers, most everyone including people who voted for Republicans (I'm talking about you folks in the defense industry up in Virginia) will soon see what this noise is, about fiscal multipliers.  If the economy tanks because of the sequester cuts, then fiscal multipliers are large and cutting government spending was not prudent.  I'm not expecting a mea culpa from Tea Party supporters, though -- they're inconceivably fixated on smaller government, not about the economic outcomes.

Want: Glass.

Just, not at $1500 though. Make it $500 and I'll even wait in a long line.

Science: Conservatives use their brains differently from Liberals.

Discovery News excerpt from scientists studying the brains of Democrats / liberals and Republicans / conservatives:

"Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward. 

Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. 

While their brain activity differed, the two groups' behaviors were identical, the study found."

Obviously I'm just touching the surface of the article.  Maybe you didn't catch it though, but Republicans use a part of their Right side of the brain, while Democrats use the Left side of the brain.  Funny, right?

Click through and read the original post in Live Science.  There's more in it (and further links) including this little jewel:

"Recent investigations into the psychology of liberals and conservatives have found a number of subtle differences, from conservatives exhibiting more squeamishness to liberals paying less attention to negative stimuli or threats."

Amtrak is expensive! (on the one route I want to take)

This is weird.  Portland, Oregon to Tacoma, Washington is 144 miles apart, and costs $26 each way on Amtrak Cascades.  Going to Seattle is another 30 miles, and you're on the same train (TAC is just a stop in between PDX and SEA on Cascades) but it costs $2 less!

If you add the federal mileage rate to the gasoline per gallon price, and you drive a vehicle with modest (26 mpg on the highway), it'll cost you less to drive to Tacoma, too!

If you drive speed limit, you will get to Tacoma about 15~20 minutes faster than the train; if you drive slightly faster (as in 4 mph) you'll save more than a half hour.

So why take Amtrak from Portland to Tacoma?  I'm considering taking the train to Tacoma and back in one day to explore Tacoma with its museums.  But that means that I have just 6.5 hours between the earliest and latest trains.  One benefit is the ability to relax and stretch out while working on the computer; but the downside is the cost and time constraints.

It wasn't always this expensive, though.  A year ago it was $22 each way to Tacoma, making it slightly better to ride the train than to drive.

So of course, I was looking forward to high-speed rail, as the Northwest was one corridor that was given the designation and money, under the 2009 ARRA.  And I thought that, perhaps, Seattle - Tacoma - Portland could put together a combined 2024 Summer Olympics bid, with high speed rail.

Bleh: I read the White House's summary of the improvements between Seattle and Portland:

"Two additional daily round trips will be added between Seattle and Portland, for a total six; travel time will be reduced by at least 5 percent."

You gotta be kidding me.  $800 million and it'll just cut 5% off the time between Seattle and Portland?  That's just 10 minutes.  $800 million to save 10 minutes and add two more train rides?!?

I need a driverless Google Car, NOW!!!

Hell, the USDOT should just give Google that $800M to push out driverless car retrofit kits, and let us all enjoy a peaceful ride in our own vehicles!

Funny observations: Free Photoshop / Illustrator tools.

If you use Photoshop and Illustrator, you inevitably make your way to a host of freebie tools including brushes, shapes and patterns.  After using these tools with great frequency, when you wander around the internet in search of inspiration or other creative designs, you start to spot those very freebie tools that you use.

Everyone likes free.  Except that baby girl in the commercial, that is.

Big Pharma ads are amusing.

This drug will solve your problem!
(It might kill you.  But technically that's solving your problem, right?)

Embrel: "Patients treated with Enbrel are at increased risk for developing serious infections that may lead to hospitalization or death."
Cymbalta: "There have been reports of hepatic [liver] failure, sometimes fatal, in patients treated with Cymbalta."
Humira: "Patients treated with HUMIRA are at increased risk for developing serious infections that may lead to hospitalization or death."
Abilify: "Elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis treated with antipsychotic drugs are at an increased risk of death."
Celebrex: "CELEBREX (celecoxib) may cause an increased risk of serious cardiovascular thrombotic events, myocardial infarction, and stroke, which can be fatal."

The ads are funny, if you think about it.  First they present a scenario where, after taking their drug, the world is a wonderful place to live in, followed by a calm spoken warning that taking this drug may result in death.

Very calm death, apparently.

Spring is coming, quickly.

Buds and birds are showing up everywhere.  That was a short, temporary Winter, wasn't it?

Miami, USC and the NCAA.

The report over the botched investigation of University of Miami transgressions, with regards to the NCAA's COI staff, has been released.  As a result Julie Roe Lach, VP of enforcement at the COI, was fired.

Miami
Last month when the screw-up was first revealed, it was thought that Miami had leverage over the NCAA regarding sanctions over Nevin Shapiro's involvement.  Maybe.  But if you look back at Paul Dee's tenure as the athletic director, you have to wonder why they should get excused from anything.  Heck, in his own, hypocritical words, Paul Dee said that USC "should have known" what was going on with Reggie Bush.

USC and the NCAA
In that released report, included a summary of individual accountability.

Ameen Najjar, former Director of Enforcement -- "He developed a “way around” that legal advice – characterizing payments to Perez as reimbursement for “costs” rather than compensation for legal services – but never sought or obtained Legal Staff approval for his “way around."

 I want to refer to Dan Weber / USCFootball.com in 2010, writing about Ameen Najjar's involvement with the COI's investigation of USC:

"At the Tempe hearing, the NCAA's enforcement staff director Ameen Najjar said that the NCAA had no part in excluding USC and McNair from the enforcement staff's interviews of Lloyd Lake and his family.  [...] But according to USC attorney Mauch Amir, the enforcement staff said something else in an email sent to another USC attorney Nov. 6, 2007, the morning of the interview, from the same Mr. Najjar as quoted above as to why USC was "banned" from the interview."

Now that we know Najjar acted with intent to deceive others at the COI, it doesn't take any imagination whatsoever to suspect that Najjar openly lied to USC and others.  If those COI emails come out, as a part of the Todd McNair lawsuit, could we find our smoking gun?

USC should be sending a request to Mark Emmert to investigate Najjar's actions regarding the COI's investigation of USC at the very least, don't you think?

This past week: Politics, Iran, Oil, Guns and Immigration

A review of some things I probably could have blogged about, this past week, and am now doing so.

Politics
Chuck Hagel's confirmation was never really in doubt.  Despite the theatrics of Republicans in the Senate, his confirmation was only being slowed down, not blocked.  Which brings me back to two previous posts denoting that this is par for the course with the GOP.  Even if they actually supported a nominee, they still placed filibusters on a vote to confirm appointees.

When freshman Senator Ted Cruz reiterated fringe speculation (from Breitbart) that some group called "Friends of Hamas" may have given money to Chuck Hagel, it was amusing that anyone took it seriously...because no such group existed.  Chuck Hagel isn't some wet-behind-the-ear freshman Republican; he is a twice-elected former senator, war veteran conservative.

That the media continued to echo the wrong narrative (that there remains questions on Benghazi, that Hagel's nomination was being held up by questions over Hagel's finances, etc.) is unsurprising, really.

Iran
I've more or less ignored Iran because almost every time they're in the news, yet again the media simply echos whatever talking points the issuer (Iran) has made.  Sending up a monkey and then receiving him alive?  A new fighter jet with stealthy components?

It's all just BS that the media did not bother to call out, either because they don't have the ability to make such determinations on their own, or they're just lazy.

Last week was the most hilarious yet: a clearly photoshopped image of Iran's purported new fighter jet, in action.  You didn't even need to bother with the analysis of the photo, to know that it was faked.  The design of the aircraft itself is impossible: incorrect proportions of the wingspan to fuselage with impossibly small air intakes and a lack of directional vents, combined with conspicuously missing rivets.  Iran's new fighter jet was a mock-up of cheap materials coddled together.

All this points to: Iran's leadership is so insecure about its place in the Middle-East and the world, that it has taken to faking accomplishments as a means to try to fool people into believing that the sanctions aren't working -- they are -- and that they know WTF they're doing -- they don't.  They don't even know how to properly use Photoshop, for goodness sake.

Oil
Energy independence does not automatically imply price stability nor does it confer foreign policy freedom, but that's how conservatives have spun it, when talking about domestic oil production and the Keystone XL pipeline.  So long as a nation relies on petroleum and the global market remains a global market, no amount of oil independence will protect domestic oil from price fluctuations, particularly from spikes resulting from militaristic or political actions.

To achieve true energy independence, one must pursue unlimited sources.  Yes, Julian Simon wrote -- correctly -- decades ago that petroleum is infinite, insofar that as a commodity, price increases would force innovation.  However, this concept of unlimited petroleum relied on correct market pricing (which I am sure, does not exist) and incurs economic pain the closer you get towards the tail end of a resource.

If you pursue a truly unlimited resource, you still run into economic forces, but of a slightly different beast.  First, there is no market incentive to pursue an unlimited supply of energy -- profit is the only incentive of a market economy.  Second, the further you move towards non-petroleum energy, the cost of petroleum will drop, creating an incentive to move back to petroleum (a reiteration of Julian Simon's point, but from the opposite face of the coin).

Guns
With the exception of rural areas -- and I mean back country -- guns offer a false sense of security (if I lived on 20 acres, I most certainly would own guns).  An oft-cited quote, from people attending gun-rights rallies, is that by virtue of a bunch of people having guns at a gun-rights rally, there will be no violence.  You see, these same people actually think that mass murderers are so stupid as to walk straight to a gun-rights rally, in order to commit their heinous act of mass murder.

I suspect that these people equate mental illness with an intellectual deficiency.

And anyway, having a bunch of guns and people in a concentrated area, increases the likelihood of an accidental shooting.

While calling for an uninhibited protection of an (apparently) inviolable 2nd Amendment, some of these very same people have no problems with curtailing violent video games -- Freedom of Speech, 1st Amendment.  See: Wayne LaPierre, hypocritical NRA guy.

By the way, I called it an apparently inviolable 2nd Amendment for a reason: Wayne LaPierre has noted that it is acceptable to block the mentally ill from owning guns.  In other words, LaPierre is soaked in his hypocrisy, from the neck on down.

Immigration
Marco Rubio is just another politician seeking the spotlight.  On Saturday, he lambasted a leak from the White House, that presented a first draft of an alternative bill, in case Congress could not get its act together and build their own immigration reform bill, calling it, "dead on arrival".

Criticizing the first draft of an alternative plan (which was only partially revealed) is the sort of stuff you'd expect from a drama queen, not a senator.

But consider: Republicans have alternatively complained that either President Obama has failed to lead or that his involvement is counterproductive and not wanted.

And I leave you with this excerpt from a Time Magazine article on Rubio, the politician:

"Given his previous wobbles on immigration, there’s a broad consensus that political calculations will help drive Rubio’s position on reform but no consensus about where [...] perhaps immigration gives him a chance to prove he can work across the aisle, get something big done and help save his party. But he could also cement his status as a conservative stalwart by rejecting a deal, especially if he manages to dump the blame on Obama."

More or less on script, don't you think?  Rubio is all about Rubio, and not about solving the nation's problems.

This weekend: Watch Criterion movies on Hulu for free.

I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but this weekend Hulu has the Criterion collection available for free on Hulu (no need for Hulu+).  I've been a bit busy, so I'm only now getting to watch one movie: Kwaidan (ghost stories).  I'd seen it as a child, so I thought I would rewatch it -- LOVE Hoichi the Earless, a classic Japanese ghost story that everyone knows!  Kowai kowai!!!  こわい!!!

Love me some obake / ghost stories and samurai movies.  Especially love movies with Toshiro Mifune.

Goats. Yelling. Like humans.

I think they're screaming bloody murder.  Or something.

Not even the dog knows what the goat is trying to say, in the last one.

Finally found an Android Live Wallpaper I love.

Paperland Pro.  Love it and the parallax...love it so much that I actually bought it.

So you think you own that piece of software?

Beware: Microsoft changed its EULA terms on retail forms (non-subscription, boxed units) of Microsoft Office 2013.  If you install Office 2013 on a computer, it is forever tied to that computer, period.  You cannot uninstall it, then reinstall it on a new or some other computer.  If your computer dies or you buy a new computer, you have to buy a new license.

Obviously they are trying to push people to subscription -- pay forever -- software.  But there is the right way to do it, and the wrong way to do it.  The right way to do it, is to offer a low price, compared to the boxed software price while keeping it as flexible as the boxed software.  The wrong way to do it is to screw over boxed software owners by restricting the license to the box it is installed on; that's slimy business practices, especially since very few people read the EULA fine print before installing software.

Of course, I have never owned Microsoft Office, because there have always been cheaper or free options available, now more than ever.

More on that meteorite shower in Russia.

One fragment hit Lake Chebarkul:

Another fragment hit a zinc factory in the same region:

2012 DA14 asteroid streaming early.

Previously, NASA's JPL said it would start streaming at 11:00 PST, but they started much earlier.  I've been watching the feed for the last 15 minutes, now.  The number of people viewing is steadily increasing, closing in on 300K; that'll probably explode when people start tuning in, at 11:00.

By the way, NASA says that the Russian meteorite is not related to 2012 DA14, as it came from the opposite direction.

11:00 am PST -- Live NASA JPL asteroid tracking

Embedded below. :D

More information on 2012 DA14, on NASA's website.



Live Video streaming by Ustream

Russian meteorites (Hint: It's not US weapons testing and it's not Angry Birds)

The early morning buzz: Meteorites comes crashing down in Russia.  Of course not to be outdone by Nature, a (Russian) politician claims that it was the US that did it.

Esoteric thought: Skip the uninstaller and track the installer?

Everyone who has ever uninstalled software, knows of the craptastic job the uninstaller does.  Some of it has to do with keeping secret entries on your registry that prevent you from reusing expired software by uninstalling and reinstalling.  Use a dedicated uninstaller like CCleaner and you might discover that it caused some unintended consequences such as accidental file disassociations or wrongly purged dynamic link libraries (DLL files).

So why not build a software (external or OS-inclusive) that tracks exactly what an installer does when it is triggered, then write it to a file?  No, this is not like a system restore; a system restore captures an image of what your critical systems looked like, then restores that image.  An installer tracker would create a traceable path of activities that could be undone properly.

Dennis Dixon reunited with Chip Kelly.

I don't know whether he'll pan out, but on Valentine's Day, the Eagles officially signed Dennis Dixon.  I can recall in 2007 thinking that Dennis Dixon was the real deal, right up until he tore his ACL.  That game actually reminds me of what happened to RG-III in the playoff game against Seattle, when he collapsed in the back field without anyone tackling him.  In retrospect, I think the fans were in more pain than Dixon was.

I don't think there's a question of whether or not CK's offense will work with Dixon at the helm; I think the issue is whether or not the Eagles owner will let CK run the hurry-up offense.  If the option-read couldn't work immediately in the NFL, someone forgot to tell John Harbaugh.

Looking forward to next season already!  I can't wait to see how the league adjusts to having so many option-read quarterbacks; with all of them in the NFC (Russell Wilson, RG-III, Colin Kaepernick, Dennis Dixon), it'll be one crazy conference!

BTW, anyone else curious as to whether or not Tim Tebow can make it in the NFL?  Having watched Wilson, RG-III, Kaepernick and Dixon play, Tebow has a chance with his feet, but not his arm.  Those other guys can throw tight, accurate spirals, whereas Tebow has wavered between sidearm delivery (that gets knocked down) and wobbly overhead throws that fall yards short of their target.  Worst possible place he could have gone, was to the NYJ with Tony Sparano there...that was a clusterbomb with Tebow reverting back to sidearm throws.

That's an odd transition: RIM to BBRY

Something that amused me and therefore I have been tracking:  Since the day that RIM's stock listing was changed to BBRY, their stock has done something of a bubble.

Mr. Dry Mouth.

Political attack ads ≠ product attack ads?

The 2013 Harris Interactive RQ (Reputation Quotient) poll is out, and Amazon is on top.  What struck me, was that Microsoft had fallen quite a bit, so I thought I'd cull some of their older sets of polls to see what was going on.  This is what I got:

80 is the cut off level for Harris Interactive's rating for "Excellent".  In the nine years of data I could find (2009 and 2010 are exactly the same, so it points to some sort of duplication error) Microsoft managed to break the 80 point level twice, while Google is the opposite.

So it occurred to me, that of recent vintage Microsoft has been trying to shore up its products by using political-style attack ads against Microsoft, with its Scroogled (2012, 2013) and its Gmail Man (2011).  While it may have damaged some of Google's reputation, it may have resulted in a disproportionate knock on Microsoft's name.

Microsoft is now ranked lower than Apple was, just before Apple introduced the iPhone.

Likewise, I wonder if all those lawsuits have been hurting the reputation of Apple more than it has, of Google?

Marco Rubio, world class level of whining.

Listening to Senator Rubio talk, I can't help but notice that he is using a whining voice that turns up when he wants to sound upset.  He keeps touching his face, too -- that is odd.  He even stopped to reach down and grab a bottle of water.  He's not ready for prime time speaking to a camera, apparently.

And whoa, the lies.

He said that GDP shrank the last 3 months; not true at all.  As the BEA report showed, in the last quarter GDP grew, just not as fast as inflation.  And other economic indicators point to an upward adjustment to a positive GDP number.

So of course, when he says that we need to grow the economy by cutting deficits and spending, how exactly do you reconcile total GDP = private GDP + public GDP?  Either you cut public spending and therefore cut public contribution to total GDP, or you don't; it's not that complicated.  To wit: the last quarter BEA release highlighted this very fact, where government defense spending was the primary reason why GDP was lower!

He talks about changing education but not spending more money; yet he doesn't explain how he'd pay for those changes -- sounds familiar (Bush's education reforms endorsed by Republicans).

He mentioned that energy independence would help the economy and bring back jobs from China.  That's one hell of a whopper, I gotta say.  Energy independence hasn't positively affected gasoline prices one bit, as most drivers in the US should be able to discern this week.  Jobs back from China?  If jobs come back from China, they're low-wage manufacturing, not high-paying wages.  I mean really, he talked about a skills mismatch earlier, only to come back to the idea of bringing back those exported jobs!  Make up your mind, Marco!

Marco Rubio was 90% negative / 10% positive.   President Obama was the opposite, but more importantly, his message carried emotional force and determinism.

Obama: They deserve a vote.

President Obama just hit a home run, when he said that the parents of Hadiya Pendleton deserved a vote, that victims of Aurora Colorado deserve a vote; that the victims of Tuscon Arizona deserved a vote; that Gabrielle Giffords deserved a vote; that the victims of Sandy Hook deserved a vote.

It was a forceful, emotional statement and it brought tears to the eyes of many of those survivors in attendance.

Exceptionally upset with efileforBusiness practices.

My friend used efileforBusiness to send me a 1099; why she couldn't use the plain paper version that she's used for the last several years, or why she couldn't use the IRS' own fill-in form, I have no idea.  That means that my social security number, address and name is out there in the cloud, waiting to be hacked -- if you're going to try to steal personal information, what better target, than one that collects personally identifiable information?

I don't care if they use Verisign or Norton -- Verisign issued fraudulent digital signatures and Norton's antivirus couldn't stop Chinese hackers -- these people are using off the shelf products to build their site, and therefore it will be hacked eventually.

Worse, their own site specifies that:

"We may transfer or otherwise disclose information collected from and about you to the following entities for the following purposes: (1) to our service providers, suppliers and business associates, if the disclosure will enable them to fulfill your request for products or services from us for another vendor on our site; (2) to our service providers and business associates, if the disclosure will enable them to perform a business, professional or technical support function for us; (3) to our affiliates and other third parties so that they may contact you with marketing offers of their own; (4) to other companies, credit bureaus or government agencies in connection with issues related to fraud, credit or debt collection; (5) as necessary if we believe that there has been a violation of our site Terms of Use, of the law or of our rights or the rights of any third party; (6) to respond to judicial process and provide information to law enforcement agencies or in connection with an investigation on matters related to public safety, as permitted by law, or otherwise as required by law; and (7) if our company or substantially all of its assets are acquired, your personal information may be one of the transferred assets."

Of course, I sent an email requesting that they delete my information from their systems, because I do not want it to be caught up in a hacker's pastebin dump, and I do not want my information sold or otherwise given out to others, who may then resell it down the line.

They responded by saying that they are required to keep my info, by the IRS.  That feels about as slimy as it gets, that they're taking advantage of an IRS rule, to give themselves the right to use my personal information to resell, without my consent.

Need another reason to not trust them?  They are registered in Florida under a separate entity, Everglades Direct, Inc., as a foreign corporation (Minnesota), registering their company name (efileforbusiness) under a separate entity, Complyright Distribution Services, Inc., with the same officers as Everglades Direct, Inc.  They also have registered (and operate) several other businesses including GNeil and Holiday Manor.  Once they have your info, they will circulate your info among their various companies, and so on -- try tracking down your personal information once that happens.

I am pissed off like hell; I have a notion to talk to her CPA, the person who recommended using them.

Do you have a Dell battery problem?

I'd noticed that, if I had plugged in my laptop in an outlet other than the one that I had been using prior to my dog's accidental knockdown of my laptop (I know, blame the dog, right?), it would give me the "plugged in but not charging" warning.

Upon searching for about an hour and trying different things, I thought to myself that maybe I should inspect the battery.  That's when I noticed the little button and five LED lights on the bottom (see picture below).  So I pressed the button -- held it for a few seconds until the lights went out -- then turned the laptop on again, and voila, problem solved!

Simple, huh?  I didn't see anyone mentioning this method, so I thought I should make a post about it.

Ellen DeGeneres' Grammys fill in the quote.

Apparently there was this awards show  -- I think it's called the "Grammys" -- in Los Angeles, the other day.  I think it was actually the Ellen Degeneres show, though.  Fill in the quotes:

"Portia honey, check it out!"

"Mint green dress!"

"And that necklace!"

"I like mint, but my new favorite color is red."

"Quick, Portia, before anyone photobombs us!"

"Sir, the Taylor Swift broken heart fund needs more than a penny!"

Who are you bringing to the State of the Union address?

At the State of the Union address, at least one Republican (who has threatened to impeach the President) is bringing a far-right supporter of sedition, Ted Nugent, who has previously made veiled threats to the President and other officials (and oh by the way, was either a draft-dodger or a self-admitted liar.)  Well, at least he's against drugs and alcohol.

Meanwhile, the First Lady will be hosting the parents of Hadiya Pendleton, the young woman who was a victim of gun violence in Chicago, alongside with other victims of gun violence, as guests of other Democrats.

In one camp, you have people who have threatened the lives of those who would restrict gun ownership, and in the other camp, you have people who are looking to stop the killings.

Best quote by the guy who shot Usama Bin Laden.

I'm not a pacifist; I can't be, because Evil doesn't lay down and surrender and isn't one to listen to reason.  Since 9/11, I've always felt that Afghanistan was a necessary war to go after one of the worst mass killers in American history.  (Don't get me wrong: I think the assault on the civil liberties of Americans is wrong, that water-boarding is illegal torture, and both point to an establishment of a perpetual state of fear.  But I just know that there are some truly evil people out there, and that they need to be killed ASAP, not some 10 years later.)

Thus, I was interested in reading the REAL first-person account of the raid on Usama Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound, written up in Esquire.  It was about the mission, but it was also about the after life of a specialized warrior employee of the United States, talking about the hardships they faced with limited support.

Within the article, one awesome section that serves as a counterpoint to a certain ST6 member who went public and wrote a book:

[If caught] "The original plan was to have Vice-President Biden fly to Islamabad and negotiate our release with Pakistan's president. 

This is hearsay, but I understand Obama said, Hell no. My guys are not surrendering. What do we need to rain hell on the Pakistani military? That was the one time in my life I was thinking, I am fucking voting for this guy.  I had a picture of him lying in bed at night, thinking, You're not fucking with my guys. Like, he's thinking about us. 

We got word that we'd be scrambling jets on the border to back us up."

 There are a few other choice quotes in there, but that section (above) cracked me up.

It's worth a read, because it clears up the misinformation that has been spread around, including that which was seen on 60 Minutes, in an interview with the one ST6 member who went public and wrote a book on the raid.

Funny thing about dogs...

Unlike humans, they don't save the best for last; they eat the best, first.

Given three different cookies, my dog eats his favorite first, followed by the next tolerable one, and maybe if he's hungry, the last one that he doesn't really care for will get eaten (maybe not for another hour).

It's an extension of a dog's lack of emotional restraint.  When you come home they unleash 150% of their love that you, incredulously, came back!  When you're close to the dog park, they'll pull, pull, pull harder!  After dinner, they'll search you out and kiss you uncontrollably!

So when you give them three cookies, they'll eat their favorite!

About that Facebook Graph logo.

Is it just me?  It looks like sperm going around in a circle.

Maybe they're lost, and therefore Facebook Graph search will help them find their target?

McDonald's new ad: dunking.

I just saw McDonald's new ad, showing NFL players dunking footballs over the crossbar, interspersed with customers dunking Chicken McNuggets into sauce.

The problem is, the football season is over.  It's prime-time basketball season (we're just a month away from March Madness) and the act of dunking came from basketball.

You'd think that they'd air ads highlighting basketball dunks for their McNuggets, not football dunks -- somebody dropped the ball.  Heh.

I thought energy independence was supposed to lower prices?

According to Bloomberg:

"The U.S. met 84 percent of its own energy needs in the first 10 months of 2012, on track to be the highest annual rate since 1991, according to data from the EIA, the statistical arm of the Energy Department. The country’s crude output grew by a record 766,000 barrels a day last year to the highest level in 15 years, the biggest annual jump since the first commercial well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859."

So, if we're matching 1991 levels for energy independence, why are pump prices rising, with above-normal seasonal highs?  After all, conservatives (I hope no one forgot Mitt Romney's promises) and the incessant oil industry ads tell us that higher energy independence through increased domestic oil production will lower prices at the pump.

Where is that price drop?  The average price in 1991, was $1.10 / gallon; adjusted for inflation, that should be about $1.85 today.

So funny thing: even as oil reserves (excluding the federal strategic petroleum reserve) rise, gasoline prices have risen.  Last Summer we had more oil stored away in tanks, than at the depths of prices and the market, during the 2008 recession.

It sure looks like the real problem of high gasoline prices, is market manipulation, don't you think?  Prices too low?  Lower gasoline production!

Energy independence is overrated, when it comes to the cost of gasoline.

Box.com's 25GB free account.

Yesterday there was a special offer posted at CNET on Bitcasa cloud storage -- unlimited cloud storage for $49 your first year ($99 thereafter) using promo code BETATHANKS -- but I'm a cheapskate and would rather not pay to store anything.  Frankly, I'm also a bit wary of newish companies without a track record, although if I had a small business with lots of archival needs, I'd jump on this.

In that CNET post, someone mentioned that Box.com (formerly Box.net) was temporarily offering free 25GB cloud storage accounts.  I decided to jump on that offer, because Box has been around for a few years now, and 25GB is a nice chunk of free storage which would allow me to store valuable files in the cloud in case of fire, etc.

The only problem now, is the amount of time it's taking to upload (sync) folders.  I can easily fill up the 25GB, so I also had to be judicious in which folders to sync for backups in case of emergency.  Of course, in my 20 years of owning computers, I've only once had to deal with a corrupted hard drive.

I can imagine a day when the concept of buying external storage devices or writing data to an optical disc like a DVD or Blu-Ray, will be antiquated, all replaced by the cloud.  Maybe 2020?

---

Update: Act fast, and you can get 50!!! GB for free!

December 2012 comScore US smart phone market share.

comScore released their December 2012 US smart phone market share report, showing that the iPhone share of the US smart phone market grew significantly in December, mostly at the expense of Blackberry.

Based on comScore's projections of ~129.5M smart phones in December 2012 (which was an increase of ~6.2M from November), we can extrapolate that, compared to November's numbers:

• Microsoft gained ~56.5K subscribers even though they lost 0.1 percentage points in market share;
• Blackberry lost ~713K subscribers and lost 0.9 percentage points in market share;
• Apple gained ~3.85M subscribers and increased 1.3 percentage points in market share;
• Google gained ~2.94M subscribers while losing 0.3 percentage points in market share.

If you look back from three months ago (September data), the Apple bounce from the iPhone 5 is clear.

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Dec. 2012 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Sep. 2012 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Sep-12	Dec-12	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google	52.5%	53.4%	0.9
Apple	34.3%	36.3%	2.0
Blackberry	8.4%	6.4%	-2.0
Microsoft	3.6%	2.9%	-0.7

Now, it's worth noting that Blackberry did itself no favors when they announced last week that their BB10 phones would not reach the US until March.  Their attrition accelerated in December -- that seems to me to be a signal that most users are not nearly as patient as Blackberry needs them to be.  And in fact, others have stated that WP has overtaken Blackberry in the US.

For Microsoft, this marks a full month of very heavy marketing of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, featuring their matching UIs.  And though they gained a smidgen of subscribers, the fact of the matter is, it just looks bleak for Microsoft (on both the desktop and mobile OSes).